Posted
on December 22, 2013
On
this date in 1891, an asteroid was discovered.
Granted,
a lot of asteroids had already been discovered.
Astronomers—professionals and amateurs—had been staring into
telescopes and spotting asteroids for almost a century by 1891.
However, this discovery was like no other, because Max Wolf spotted
this particular asteroid using photography!
Astrophotography,
to be exact.
But
today commemorates his first asteroid find. Wolf had noticed that a
time-exposure photo would reveal asteroids as short streaks, because
they had planetary motion with respect to the stars. Stars are in
motion, too, but they are so far away, they seem fixed in the sky.
(Although of course the earth is in motion, rotating on its axis, so
that the stars seem to circle around the North and South Pole! It's
all very complicated, isn't it?)
So...if
Wolf discovered an asteroid using photography, you would expect the
asteroid to be named Wolf, right?
Actually,
discoverers often get to name the lands and astronomical bodies they
discover, but they don't always name them after themselves. In this
case, Wolf named this particular asteroid 323 Brucia. This was to
honor a woman named Catherine Wolfe Bruce; she had donated $10,000
for the construction of the telescope he used.
Did
you notice...His name was Wolf, hers was C. Wolfe Bruce. That's
pretty coincidental, don't you think?
Enjoy
Astrophotography
- Here is a gallery of Hubble Space Telescope images.
- Here is an article entitled “The 27 Most Mind-Blowing Space Photos of 2013 Will Put your Life on Earth in Perspective.”
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on this date:
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